“It’s huge for us,” said founder and partner Michael Sellers. “We want to be everywhere, all over the state. A lot of places don’t offer draft beer, so by having our entire line-up in cans, it allows to access to places where we otherwise couldn’t offer our entire line-up.”
Their $600,000 expansion included:
- Five new jobs
- New fermentation tanks
- A production increase to 15,000 barrels annually up from 5,000
- Distribution across the Southeast U.S.
- A second Cask automated canning line which allows them to produce 70 cans per minute.
Founded in 2008, Good People Brewing moved to its current location, across the street from the new Regions Field baseball stadium, in 2010. Regions Field is the home of the Birmingham Barons, the local minor league baseball team.
This year they opened a taproom at the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. “Birmingham and our other markets have been really good to us. When we went from selling draft only through bars and restaurants to also selling cans in grocery stores it was big for us. Opening a tap room in this beautiful new airport is also going to be really big for us.”
And the markets definitely love them. Four of the top five beers rated in the South from Beer Advocate were produced by Good People Brewing (including the number 1 overall beer, El Gordo, a Russian Imperial Stout).